Potential energy surface stretched

Results using this technique are better for force helds made to describe geometries away from equilibrium. For example, it is better to use Morse potentials than harmonic potentials to describe bond stretching. Some researchers have created force helds for a specihc reaction. These are made by htting to the potential energy surface obtained from ah initio calculations. This is useful for examining dynamics on the surface, but it is much more work than simply using ah initio methods to hnd a transition structure. 

Molecular mechanical force fields use the equations of classical mechanics to describe the potential energy surfaces and physical properties of molecules. A molecule is described as a collection of atoms that interact with each other by simple analytical functions. This description is called a force field. One component of a force field is the energy arising from compression and stretching a bond. 

Fig. 15. Section of the zero-order (...) and first-order (—) potential energy surfaces along the reaction coordinate in cases where stretching of the cleaving bond is the dominant factor of nuclei reorganization.

Let us now comment on the results obtained when including solvent effects. The geometrical arrangements of the isolated bases are not heavily affected upon solvation, thus we can expect a slight modification of the potential energy surface and therefore of the vibrational behavior for these systems. Indeed, it appears that only some stretching modes exhibit significant shifts, particularly when they involve movements of the peripheral atoms. 

Fig. 5.1 A schematic projection of the 3n dimensional (per molecule) potential energy surface for intermolecular interaction. Lennard-Jones potential energy is plotted against molecule-molecule separation in one plane, the shifts in the position of the minimum and the curvature of an internal molecular vibration in the other. The heavy upper curve, a, represents the gas-gas pair interaction, the lower heavy curve, p, measures condensation. The lighter parabolic curves show the internal vibration in the dilute gas, the gas dimer, and the condensed phase. For the CH symmetric stretch of methane (3143.7 cm-1) at 300 K, RT corresponds to 8% of the oscillator zpe, and 210% of the LJ well depth for the gas-gas dimer (Van Hook, W. A., Rebelo, L. P. N. and Wolfsberg, M. /. Phys. Chem. A 105, 9284 (2001))...

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